Spatial analysis of the information society development in Poland

Abstract

The information society development level is one of more important factors that affects people’s living standard and the competitiveness of economies. We can say the same regarding local economies (e.g. voivodships). Therefore, a very important issue is the evaluation of the digital development level in all the fields connected with information society. The purpose of the article is the evaluation of information society level and the identification of spatial dependences in Polish voivodships. The analyses were carried out on the basis of multivariate comparative analysis tools (synthetic measure) and spatial statistics and econometrics tools (global and local Moran’s statistics). Based on the works of European Commission which developed The Digital Economy and Society Index – DESI, several dozen variables were taken into consideration in the analyses; these variables were divided into five categories. For each group separately and for all the variables synthetic measures were built. The analyses pointed out the best and the worst voivodships in respect to considered phenomena. The spatial analyses concerning the identification of spatial autocorrelation occurrence were provided as well. They showed the absence of spatial autocorrelation because of the statistically insignificant negative statistics values. It means the random distribution of the synthetic values. The local statistics analyses mainly showed outliers – mazowieckie and pomorskie (with high values of the measures) and świętokrzyskie (with low values of the synthetic measure in the field of digital technologies in companies). For the local authorities the obtained results may be an indication which fields require improvement.